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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Caroline Ayres is 16 years old, and she's involved in multiple school activities and thinking about college. But when Caroline was 11 years old, though, she was dealing with something she didn't really know how to describe - an eating disorder.

“I feel that subconsciously I knew the reason I wasn`t eating wasn`t just because my stomach was hurting,” said Caroline.

At first, Caroline said it started with a nervous stomach. She didn't want to eat because she thought it'd just upset her stomach more, and her mom wasn't concerned at first.

“The nervousness and anxiety got worse over the course of the summer, and her stomach always hurt, so she ate less, and the less she ate the less she wanted to eat. And I didn`t suspect an eating disorder for a few months because she was still doing everything, she went to camp, she was playing sports. It wasn`t until the fall that I realized how little she was eating,” said her mom, Suzy Ayres.